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NC Nanny State: Preschooler’s lunch not “nutritious” enough

RAEFORD — A preschooler at West Hoke Elementary School ate three chicken nuggets for lunch Jan. 30 because a state employee told her the lunch her mother packed was not nutritious.

The girl’s turkey and cheese sandwich, banana, potato chips, and apple juice did not meet U.S. Department of Agriculture guidelines, according to the interpretation of the agent who was inspecting all lunch boxes in her More at Four classroom that day.

The Division of Child Development and Early Education at the Department of Health and Human Services requires all lunches served in pre-kindergarten programs — including in-home day care centers — to meet USDA guidelines. That means lunches must consist of one serving of meat, one serving of milk, one serving of grain, and two servings of fruit or vegetables, even if the lunches are brought from home.

When home-packed lunches do not include all of the required items, child care providers must supplement them with the missing ones.

The girl’s mother — who said she wishes to remain anonymous to protect her daughter from retaliation — said she received a note from the school stating that students who did not bring a “healthy lunch” would be offered the missing portions, which could result in a fee from the cafeteria, in her case $1.25.

“I don’t feel that I should pay for a cafeteria lunch when I provide lunch for her from home,” the mother wrote in a complaint to her state representative, Republican G.L. Pridgen of Robeson County.

[…]

When the girl came home with her lunch untouched, her mother wanted to know what she ate instead. Three chicken nuggets, the girl answered. Everything else on her cafeteria tray went to waste.

“She came home with her whole sandwich I had packed, because she chose to eat the nuggets on the lunch tray, because they put it in front of her,” her mother said. “You’re telling a 4-year-old. ‘oh. you’re lunch isn’t right,’ and she’s thinking there’s something wrong with her food.”

The mother, who doesn’t wish to be identified at this time, says she made her daughter a lunch that contained a turkey and cheese sandwich, a banana, apple juice and potato chips. A state inspector assessing the pre-K program at the school said the girl also needed a vegetable, so the inspector ordered a full school lunch tray for her. While the four-year-old was still allowed to eat her home lunch, the girl was forced to take a helping of chicken nuggets, milk, a fruit and a vegetable to supplement her sack lunch.

The mother says the girl was so intimidated by the inspection process that she was too scared to eat all of her homemade lunch. The girl ate only the chicken nuggets provided to her by the school, so she still didn’t eat a vegetable.

The mother says her daughter doesn’t like vegetables and – like most four year olds – will only eat them at home under close supervision.

In an interview with the Civitas Institute the mother said “I can’t put vegetables in her lunchbox. I’m not a millionaire and I’m not going to put something in there that my daughter doesn’t eat and I’ve done gone round and round with the teacher about that and I’ve told her that. I put fruit in there every day because she is a fruit eater. Vegetables, let me take care of my business at home and at night and that’s when I see she’s eating vegetables. I either have to smash it or tell her if you don’t eat your vegetables you’re going to go to bed.”

The mother added, “It’s just a headache to keep arguing and fighting. I’ve even wrote a note to her teachers and said do not give my daughter anything else unless it comes out of her lunchbox and they are still going against me and putting a milk in front of her every day.

1: Since when the heck did chicken nuggets become a more healthy food option that a turkey sandwich? 2: How DARE the state decide what’s best for your child to eat and go so far as to “inspect” lunches for “nutritional content”?!

I don’t know when this “rule” was put into place here in NC, but it sounds like a scene directly out of Obama’s “fundamentally transformed” America. Scary.

I heard this on Rush today during lunch and it got me so mad. But I have a way to beat the state lunch inspectors. Get all the parents to pack their kids’ lunches EVERY day and fill it with twinkies, ding-dong and cupcakes. There is no way the school system can check everyone’s lunch bag and provide lunches to them. All the parents refuse to pay the bills the school sends and after a week they’ll rethink their policy.

Hey McDonalds. Good news! Chicken McNuggets are now healthier than Turkey and Cheese! You have been chosen. Turkeys and all out of work actors who moonlight as “Ronald” rejoice throughout the country. No word yet on whether Chickens plan to appeal the decision.

I am a vegetarian, and I warned my vegetarian friends about Obama. Now we see that their children are required to eat meat. How would Obama like to have his children FORCED to NOT eat meat. This is how our liberties quickly get eroded. We have travel police, health police and food police. Its already a police state.

Since when are chicken nuggets even nutritious, let alone something that anything other than a scavenger coyote would even do more than sniff at?

And who is Duh-1’s precious Thunderthighs to tell anyone what’s nutritious and what’s not? When she loses somewhere around 50 pounds, then she may come to my door and we can civilly discuss nutrition and the government’s role in it, but until she presents herself visually as someone who can control her own eating habits she has no business telling anyone what is healthy and what is not, and deciding, no, ORDERING what is to be eaten and what is not.

And those lying, anti-American schemers don’t even have a clue what they’re doing, whether it’s deciding what to eat, which friends to prop up with taxpayer money or that playing golf two or three times a week doesn’t sit well with poor folk that struggle to make ends meet. And that doesn’t get to their dream vacations (again, on your dime and mine) and the absolute necessity to grind our noses in it by taking “His and Hers” Air Force 747’s.

When govt. (public schools) is telling parents that they can not make a sack lunch for their child, you know it’s already too late folks.

It doesn’t matter – Obama, Romney, Santorum, whoever, these things won’t be changed because the bureacracy is in place and these govt. employees “need” something to do, in order to justify their employment.

This is so outrageous, it’s almost inconceivable. The mother packed a very healthy lunch for her child, yet some state employee decides the kid has to eat chicken nuggets? Since when is fruit, a health protein-based sandwich, and a fruit juice unhealthy? Since when does the state get to decide this? Unbelievable. What a gross violation of parental rights and what idiocy. And yet we the taxpayers pay the salary of this “lunch police.”

With all due respect to vegetarians, I do feel you should have the liberty and freedom to eat what you like.My question is are these meals kosher?
Knowing the answer is no, they are not.I see this as yet another attack on our religious freedoms in forcing Jewish kids to eat what is clearly against their beliefs.

All kneel to the God of lower centralized government health care costs, everything else is the devil I guess.

I am a GLI, pronounced “Glee” because we shall all be happy, per Obama, an official government acronym for Government Lunch Inspector. I used to be a CPS worker that made you take off your kid’s diaper when you threatened to spank them for misbehaving in public (trip to the bathroom) to “prove” you weren’t abusing them. Oh, and I’m male and your kid is a female. Sieg Heil. I have the authority … When that happenned to me, BTW, I told him when I had a court order would I strip her at 20 months in front of some CPS pervert! Social worker never came back ….. because their threats and “power” don’t stand up in front of a court. They are a last line of defense, the other two branches are complicit.

Actually, the school is claiming about seventeen different things now. Personally, I’d trust what a four-year-old says a lot sooner than I would a school principal or superintendent, especially when those people are trying to cover their hindsides and dig themselves out of a hole they themselves dug.

And there’s no one yet who’s denying that their was a FEDERAL inspector roughing up the kids emotionally.